


Our Wrongs Remain Unrectified

by sequence_fairy



Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M, Fade to Black, re-do, serious angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 11:45:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6983656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It doesn’t matter how many times they say it, or how many different ways, he’ll never believe them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Wrongs Remain Unrectified

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [deathberry prompts](http://deathberryprompts.tumblr.com) weekly drabble theme. This week's theme was 'remorse'. This is a re-write of the end of Fade to Black, where everything goes rather poorly for everyone involved. Especially Rukia.

She comes at him in a rush, he barely has time to get his blade up to deflect, and she is fighting to kill - there is no doubt in her gaze. She chases him across the plateau, and Ichigo cannot bring himself to do anything but deflect and defend. She leaps, and swings and he turns at the last moment, catching her gaze with his.

Time slows.

He remembers the first time he saw her, he remembers the soft curve of her mouth when he’d made her proud, he remembers that she’d never left him behind, never given up on him (even when he’d given up on himself) and he remembers the feel of her, next to him in the dark.

The blade of the scythe caresses the skin of his neck, and Rukia smiles. It is not her smile, it is a twisted, dark thing that makes Ichigo’s insides curl and chill and shiver.

Ichigo closes his eyes.

The _bakudo_ slams into her, and she goes flying. Sound crashes back in with all the delicacy of a freight train and Ichigo watches Byakuya advancing on his sister. The wave of purple-black energy swamps Ichigo’s senses and Byakuya doesn’t stop moving. _Senbonzakura_ rings as he draws it and Ichigo doesn’t think before leaping.

He doesn’t see the blow coming. His ears ring.

Later, when he tries to put the pieces back together, he can’t. All he has are moments.  
  
He remembers screaming her name, remembers being flung away like he weighed nothing, and remembers the cold resignation to the end on Byakuya’s face.  
  
Byakuya is the only person who also places the blame on the right shoulders and Ichigo will bear that weight, because he watched, because he did nothing and because he _failed_. As far as Ichigo’s concerned, even though it was Byakuya who dealt the final blow, Ichigo’s own hands might well have held _Senbonzakura_ and driven it through Rukia’s chest.  
  
He will never forget her eyes, pleading and in pain – suddenly and sharply returned to their normal colour - as she clutched the hilt of her brother’s sword. The sickle vanished, turning back into _Sode no Shirayuki_ and landing at her feet in a clatter. Her robes faded to their usual black, and she’d looked at him, over Byakuya’s shoulder.

“It’s not your fault,” she’d said, so softly that there’s no way he should have been able to hear her, but it was like she was speaking in the depths of his mind,  and Ichigo had been pinned by her gaze – watching as the light fled her eyes and she slumped, lifeless.    
  
Someone screamed and the wordless agony in the noise had made the hairs on the back of Ichigo’s neck stand on end (later, Renji would tell him that it had been him, that they’d had to pull him off Byakuya, that he’d nearly killed the only remaining Kuchiki, that he’d fought and snarled and finally, begged them to let him hold her, and that Byakuya had left in a whirl of _shunpo_ , tacit permission granted).

Ichigo holds her until they take her away. Until he is dragged away by Renji, his arms like iron bars around Ichigo’s chest.

“There’s nothing you could have done,” Renji says, and Ichigo fights his grip. “Don’t blame yourself, if you need to blame someone, blame _them,_ ” Renji says, hauling him back. Ichigo gives up fighting, and Renji leads him away. Ichigo does not blame the siblings.  
  
They bar him from attending the ceremony, and Byakuya has her interred on Kuchiki lands and bars him from there too. Ichigo thinks it’s probably for the best that they sealed him off from his power, collared him and corralled him in the remains of the repentance cell until it was all said and done.

They take _Zangetsu_ , and Ichigo doesn’t blame them - he is no longer worthy of his blade, no longer the man that Rukia knew he was in her heart - and _gods_ , he wishes she’d never told him that, never prodded him into being someone _better_ because look where it got him. Look where it got her.

Rukia is – Rukia _was_ the best thing that ever happened to him, and he destroyed her.

There’s a long stretch of time where nothing happens, where all Ichigo has for company is the anguish of his own failings and the echoing walls of _sekkisekki_ that surround him.

When they let him leave (when they finally let him _leave_ ) he takes one last look at the _Seireitei_ , one last sweeping glance across the place that gave him Rukia, and that took her away. Byakuya does not come to see him off, and Ichigo is glad of it.

The guilt gnaws at him. It keeps him awake at night, haunts his dreams with her face – those dark eyes blank and unseeing as she drove the scythe into his shoulder. She was going to kill him, and he remembers loosening his grip on _Zangetsu_ , remembers thinking that if killing him would stop her, then he’d let her do it, let her end his life there –  

_There’s nothing you could have done._

_It’s not your fault._  
  
_Don’t blame yourself_.

It doesn’t matter how many times they say it, or how many different ways, he’ll never believe them. He’ll spend his whole life thinking about how if he’d just been faster, been stronger, been _more_ , that she’d still be here.


End file.
